Hope and Dread

Proximity Changes Perspective

One of my goals for this blog is to highlight voices and perspectives that you might not otherwise hear from. For the month of June I have asked some of my queer friends who grew up in or spent significant time in conservative evangelical communities to share their stories.  

1. Please read each of these stories with an open mind. Put yourself in their shoes while reading by being curious about their experience. 

2. If you are a Christian remember that from your perspective each of these people are beloved children of God made in God’s image. 

3. I love and respect each of these people deeply and I’m grateful for the courage they’ve shown in sharing their stories. Engage with respect and empathy, even if you disagree. Let’s keep this space thoughtful, supportive, and open to different perspectives. 

4. Just because they are sharing their stories here on my blog does not mean that they agree with everything I have previously posted. 

This week’s contributor has chosen to remain anonymous, which I respect and understand. They are one of the most gifted writers I know, and I’m so thankful for the story they have shared here. Rather than a comprehensive look at their whole life, they have chosen to focus on a few key moments. In doing so we are brought into their world, their uncertainty, and their pain. It is my hope that you will read this with an open mind, putting yourself in the writer’s shoes, and allowing their story to sit with you for the rest of this week. 

Photo by Tegan Mierle on Unsplash

The bathroom of our Christian camp cabin smelled overwhelmingly of Bath and Body Works perfume. I tried to convince myself that was why I felt so suffocated. As was customary at the time, a girl from my youth group had sprayed Cherry Blossom at least seven times before the cowbell rang out over camp, signalling the start of a mediocre dining hall dinner, and night chapel soon after. I was quickly attempting to fix my hair, which had abandoned the meticulous straightness I had spent hours on that morning and rebelled back to its weird, frizzy waves. Behind me, my best friend, Jane, had an odd look on her face that I was desperately trying to ignore. It was a tasteful mix between apprehension and disgust, and it made my stomach want to empty all the Swedish Fish I had shared with Tessa on the bus ride over. Her reflection taunted me in the mirror like some sort of ghost we’d try to summon later that night. 

“It’s not right, you know.” She said after a moment, her voice low. I glanced nervously towards the other room. A few girls lingered on the bunk beds, but they were too busy chatting about which boys they hoped to sit next to during chapel to notice the absolute landmine of gossip they could stumble upon. “God doesn’t allow that.” She whispered, hesitantly. Part of me was grateful that she spoke so quietly. Discretion was a small mercy, but invaluable in middle school politics. She could have been so much crueler, and as I met her eyes in the mirror, we both recognized that truth. But the other part of me felt a deeper sense of shame, like the words were so dirty that she wouldn’t even wish to echo them off the mildewy tile. And they stabbed me just as painfully, regardless of how softly they were uttered. 

My hands dropped from my hair, resting on the edge of the sink. I didn’t need to ask what she meant. “I know.” I replied casually, thinking if I agreed with her then this conversation could end quicker. 

“Were you lying or telling the truth?” She asked, a double-edged question. I felt like a cornered child– both answers were something reprehensible. Did I want her to see me as a liar or something far worse? I knew the answer she’d prefer to hear, and I was used to caving to her wishes. 

“I was just kidding.” I answered quickly and coughed, trying in vain to dispel the tightness in my chest. “I didn’t think they would actually take me seriously.” In truth, I didn’t mean to come out at all. The boys in the back of the bus were threatening to tell everyone, and I figured I should just beat them to it. And with my infallible optimism, I thought it might even make me come off as edgy. Marriage had just been legalized a few years prior, but people were becoming more accepting, right? 

As soon as I said it, the boys’ eyes lit up like I was some funny-looking prey, batting me with the inane question of whether I was an “ass or tits” kind of girl. They heckled me on how far I’d gone with a girl and the nitty-gritty details of how it all worked. I laughed it off, glancing nervously at Jane and hoping she would find it dumb and forget it. But she wasn’t laughing, she just stared. 

That night, I didn’t sleep well– and it wasn’t just because of the hard mattress or the snoring coming from the bunk above. I was praying for God to heal my mind, to cut out whatever perverted part of my brain kept reliving a memory from the week before. It was Jane and I, waiting on one of the couches after church ended. Her head was resting on my lap, dark straight hair draped over my thighs and her fingertips idly tracing. “You have such skinny legs.” She said, and I held my breath. If I was still enough, perhaps she wouldn’t feel how fast my heart was beating. For some horrible reason beyond my comprehension, I was focused on the feeling of her breath against my skin. I wanted this moment to never end and, at the same time, violently disappear off the face of the earth. 

“Are they? I’ve never thought about it.” I lied. The meaningless width and curve of my calves was something I’d always been insecure about– like mother, like daughter. Her compliment caught me off guard, and my face warmed more than I dared to acknowledge. Certainly not here. I was careful to keep my hands on the couch, no matter how much I wanted to run them through her hair. 

Several years go by, and my bus-ride confession gets forgotten in the back of a moth-ridden closet. To my utter relief, Jane doesn’t bring it up and I give her no reason to. I was doing well for myself– I went to church every Sunday, earned straight As, and was planning my new life at a reputable Christian university. I even had an attractive boyfriend, though anyone with an ounce of insight would know he was undeniably, unequivocally homosexual. Occasionally people questioned why we never kissed, but I could easily redirect it into a vow of chastity or some other holy endeavor. I walked a thin tightrope, but at this point in life, it was the only thing I knew how to do. To consider anything else felt like looking down at the dizzying vastness on either side of the wire. The path ahead of me was clear and straight, so why would I dare to deviate from it? 

One of the final outings with my youth group was our annual camping trip at Dillon Beach. By September, it was too cold for swimming, so we filled our time with nightly games of capture the flag on the sand dunes, singing by the campfire, and deftly avoiding the cow patties that covered nearly every inch of our camp. In our first year, my friends learned (with much embarrassment) that tents are not as private as cabins. Several of us girls were huddled up in our sleeping bags, bestowing what felt like esoteric knowledge to a young apprentice. A homeschooled girl, one with an excessive collection of essential oils that she used instead of medicine and deodorant, had just revealed to us that she had no idea what a mammogram was. And so, like any dutiful mentor, we loudly and in graphic detail explained to her every taboo thing we possibly knew, starting with mammograms and ending with the birds and the bees. This went on for perhaps forty minutes, interrupted with high-pitched squawking and snickering, before our pastor came over to our tent and informed us that everyone in camp could hear every word we said. 

It was with this mortifying experience in mind that Tessa, one of Jane and my closest childhood friends, silently sobbed into my shoulder. The wind battered at all sides of our tent, which surely swallowed up any sound from the interior. But neither of us could ever be too careful.

“What’s going on with you and Jane?” I asked quietly, like I was approaching a scared animal. They hadn’t spoken to each other for the last two days– and everyone in our youth group knew it. Tessa furrowed her brows and shook her head, her mouth remained tightly sealed with a poison she hoped to keep down. I’m sure she expected me to shrug, toss on my shoes and join the rest of the group for another day of traversing the dunes. But I stayed, sitting on my knees and waiting for her to speak. Hoping she would say what I feared and hoping I was wrong. 

Maybe she sensed that we were the same, somehow. Or maybe she was simply too tired to hold her secret any longer. Regardless, Tessa confessed she had feelings for the same girl that confronted me in the cabin bathroom all those years ago. And she absolutely despised herself for it. I distantly thought to myself that Jane must be some sort of siren sent by the devil. Thick raindrops leaked through our tent and fell down my back as I held Tessa tightly, her thick blonde hair sticking to her cheeks and bony frame shaking as if she were feverish. The only thing I thought to do was pray for her. I said meaningless things out into the humid air of our tent, the flapping of the tarp drowning out most of my words. I pet the back of Tessa’s head like a mother would for her sick child. 

I wanted to baptize her anew with my own furious tears, to grab her shoulders and shake sense into her. To look her in the eyes and force her to recognize how stupid it is to feel shameful for such a thing. I wanted to rip away every instance of guilt and self-hatred she held inside her, to hold her face and kiss her just to prove that the world keeps spinning! I wanted to look her in the eyes and tell her that I understand her completely, and that there is nothing broken inside her, however much our redundant Sunday morning sermons insisted it was so. That there is a future so much greater than the awful cage we both locked ourselves in. 

Instead, I said amen, and that’s the last time we ever saw each other.